In the retail sector and elsewhere, as retail fraud and other criminal acts continue to be practiced, there has been an ongoing and growing need for improved tamper evident packaging. Foods, consumer products, medications, mail and other goods continue to be the object of tampering, whether to taint contents, alter freshness assurances, to gain valuable private and/or confidential information, or for some other purpose. In particular, product packaging is often damaged or compromised. One type of packaging that is particularly susceptible to tampering is that associated with pre-paid gift cards. As an example, it is a common practice in the pre-paid card sector to encode or otherwise load a card (e.g., a generally rectangular plastic “wallet-sized” card, akin to a credit card) with a predetermined cash equivalent value. Upon payment by a consumer for the value on the card, the card can then be used to pay for transactions until the value on the card has been depleted. The cards may not necessarily be registered in the identity of a particular individual, and thus resemble cash, in the sense that it is difficult to trace transactions and correlate them with particular users of the cards. The relative anonymity of the resulting transactions thus makes pre-paid cards attractive theft targets.
Security features are often employed in the packaging industry in an effort to deter theft and protect legitimate consumers. Unfortunately, many existing security features have been circumvented by individuals involved in retail theft. While many tamper-evident and theft-proof features have been developed, most are cost prohibitive given the low cost requirement for packaging, as the packaging must be provided to a consumer for essentially no cost as an enticement to seek goods or services from a particular retailer or service provider. In regard to pre-paid card packaging, assuming that a consumer is going to purchase a card with a value of $25, the consumer will only expect to pay $25 for the card, with no additional charges. As a result, it has proven particularly challenging to develop security features that effectively prevent and deter theft at a very low cost point.
A common theft issue with particular relevance to the pre-paid card industry includes the ability to remove a pre-paid card from a retail outlet without activating or purchasing the card. The account information can then be accessed and recorded and the card repackaged either in its original packaging or new packaging which can then be placed back onto a retail outlet shelf. Once the card is activated by a legitimate paying customer, the account information can be used to make purchases without the knowledge of the paying customer. For example, a wrongdoer may have taken a pre-paid card from a retail location, removed the card from its packaging, obtained the code associated with the card, and then carefully re-packaged the card so it appears unused, as if new. The wrongdoer will then enter into a transaction (e.g., on the internet, via mail order, or otherwise) in which the wrongdoer supplies the card code as means of payment. If and when the card is activated by the legitimate user, the transaction of the wrongdoer will be processed. The sophistication of the techniques of the wrongdoers has become so refined in recent years that re-packaging of cards into their original packaging commonly results in little or no evidence to a reasonably observant cashier that the card has been removed from the packing and subsequently repackaged.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,777,305 discloses a packaging assembly that permits remote activation and deactivation of a pre-paid card without removing the card from the packaging. However, the teachings do not appear to address the difficulties in preventing an individual from stealing an unactivated card, removing the unactivated card from the packaging to record any necessary account numbers or codes from the card and placing the unactivated card back into the packaging and subsequently back on a store shelf.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,667,247 discloses a card package assembly that includes an adhesive placed on an inner wall of the packaging to hold a card in place. However, the packaging does not appear to afford a simple and straightforward approach to determining whether tampering has occurred.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,000,844 discloses a display packaging for gift cards that includes a personal identification number or “PIN” obscured by a removable covering. However, one of the problems sought to be addressed by the present teachings does not appear to be solved by teachings of that patent, inasmuch as the disclosure of the patent makes it possible to re-cover the PIN to create the appearance that no tampering has occurred.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2009/0107862 discloses a card and carrier system that shows damage to the carrier when the enclosed card is accessed. However, the card itself shows no indication of tampering and there is no means disclosed to prevent the carrier from being repaired with no indication of tampering.
Notwithstanding the above, there remains a need for improved packaging that indicates tampering on a carrier so that the carrier cannot be repaired or reproduced with no tamper indication. There is a further need for packaging that includes unique patterns and associated substrates so that the packaging cannot be easily recreated. More particularly, there continues to be a need for low-cost tamper-evident packaging that does not allow individuals to re-package a pre-paid card after accessing and recording the necessary account information from the pre-paid card.